House Hacking vs Rental + Rent

[William Huston]

Hello All, 

Just wanted to get some feed back on a situation, recently my life had a lot of changes as i went through a divorce as some may understand, in that time i rented a very very small cheap place to stay while i got my life back together, since that has all cleared up and the dust has settled i have been looking to upgrade out of my current situation and possibly own another property instead of continue to rent. Most of the reason i have been renting is due to the fact that housing prices got a little out of control a year ago when i was ready to buy. 

Also about a year ago i scaled back from full time real estate agent to working at the hospital in a new career due to the fact i could acquire more stable income that exceeded what i was making on average as a realtor at the time. So as of lately i just been working as an agent part time with the occasional buyer, mostly fellow employees from my current hospital job. 

While working at this hospital i have come across many nurses and staff that come as temp staff based on a travel assignment and they constantly struggle to find a decent place to stay, so many  life out of hotels while they work here.. 

An idea i have been bouncing around is purchasing a larger 3+ house with plenty of parking very close to the hospital, since im single it would shorten my commute to work daily, also i could possibly rent some of the extra bedrooms at a platinum rate to the travel staff below the cost of staying in hotels, but the other side of me is saying maybe i should just buy another property purely as a rental and find somewhere closer to rent for myself. Either way im looking to move closer to my work due to the commute being up to 40 minutes each way when you work a 12+hr shift.